Keep the mornings honest, the afternoons for lying and cheating

The Guardian:

Good afternoon, how are you doing? I have to say your hair looks wonderful, and whatever perfume that is, it’s delightful. In fact, it’s precisely the same scent as Alexa Chung wears. Yes, she was telling me as much just last week when we were in that hot tub together in Berne waiting for Vladimir. Vladimir Putin. He’s just hired me and Alexa as consultants in the campaign to preserve the Siberian tiger. Yeah, it’s a really great job. I get paid in pelts.

Sorry about that, couldn’t help myself. You see it’s past midday and I find it very easy not to lie. Sorry, I mean very difficult. Neither am I alone – or am I? – as results of a study at Harvard University this week have found that lying in the afternoon comes naturally to humans. And not just humans, but animals, fish and even trees.

…

“As ethics researchers, we had been running experiments examining various unethical behaviors, such as lying, stealing, and cheating,” said ethics researchers Maryam Kouchaki and Isaac Smith in a highly attentive press release. “We noticed that experiments conducted in the morning seemed to systematically result in lower instances of unethical behaviour.”

Read the whole story: The Guardian